REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA

born July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon, Eng. died Feb. 23, 1792, London portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century. Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of the continental Grand Style. With the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was elected its first president and knighted by King George III. Additional reading Derek Hudson, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1958), is the best biography for both the scholar and the general reader. Critical assessments include Ellis K. Waterhouse, Reynolds (1941), an indispensable, scholarly work with 300 plates, and Reynolds (1973), with somewhat longer text but fewer plates; John Steegmann, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1933, reprinted 1977); and Nicholas Penny (ed.), Reynolds (1986), a substantial exhibition catalog.